Ep. 788: Life's Molecules Form in Space

Astronomy Cast

Natural Sciences, Science, Astronomy

4.8 • 3.4K Ratings

🗓️ 30 March 2026

⏱️ 32 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

Astronomy Cast Ep. 788: Life's Molecules Form in Space By Fraser Cain & Dr. Pamela Gay Streamed live on Mar 23, 2026. The theory of evolution how life takes on its wildly different forms. But how did life get started in the first place? It appears the Universe has been making life's molecules in space for billions of years, setting up the conditions for life… everywhere? One of humanity's fundamental questions is "where does life come from." We can't answer that question, but we can tell you where some of the stuff of life came from. This show is supported through people like you on Patreon.com/AstronomyCast In this episode, we'd like to thank: Burry Gowen, Eric Lee, Jeanette Wink, Michael Purcell, Andrew Poelstra, David, David Rossetter, Ed, Gerhard Schwarzer, Jason Kwong, Joe McTee, Sergey Manouilov, Siggi Kemmler, Sergio Sancevero

Transcript

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0:00.0	I'm
0:02.0	Oh Thank you. I'm Astronomycast, Episode 78, Life's Molecules in space.
0:54.5	Welcome to Astronomycast, our weekly facts-based journey through the cosmos, where we help you understand not only what we know, but how we know what we know.
1:00.5	I'm Fraser Kane. I'm the publisher of the Universe today. With me, as always, is Dr. Pamela Gay, a senior scientist for the Planetary Science Institute and the director of CosmoQuest.
1:09.4	Hey, Pamela. Hey, Fraser.
1:10.7	How you doing?
1:14.3	I just keep mixing it up on you and good, good. Yeah, just say Frosty. These introductions.
1:21.1	I may just like start with other questions. Who knows what's going to happen, but, but clearly we have
1:25.7	just fallen into a greetings rut, and we need to clean
1:28.9	this up. So here we are. Is there any news? Is there any news that people can use?
1:35.9	News of the news? I mean, that they want to use. You've seen Project Hail Mary? I have not.
1:43.9	So we can't even talk about whether or not we liked it or not. I guess you could say whether you liked. Did you like it? I liked it. I really, really liked it. Did you love it? I think so. I'm not sure I'm at the, I will buy the Lego of the Hail Mary spaceship stage. Love it. But I wasn't by the beerstein of it.
2:02.5	That feels like it's a fairly low bar for you, though. You will let go almost anything.
2:08.0	I'm running out of shelf space, so the bar I had to move. Oh, okay. All right, all right.
2:14.2	The theory of evolution explains how life takes on its wildly different forms, but how did life get started in the first place?
2:21.3	It appears the universe has been making life's molecules in space for billions of years, setting up the conditions for life everywhere.
2:29.5	And we'll talk about a second, but it's time for a break.
2:34.0	And we're back. All right, Pamela. So the old school,
2:40.0	the traditional idea, let's explain this idea of abiogenesis. We'll start there as this, like,
2:46.7	where did life come from? And what did people use to think?
3:05.1	Well, the older scientific way of looking at this was you have warm, gooey, gunk getting struck by lightning and molecules forming. And somehow this combination of warm, gooey, carbonaceous goodness,
3:12.2	and electricity led to life in a very Frankenstein kind of way.
	...

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